Injury
by Dark Ice Dragon
Summary: The aftermath of a fight.


**Summary**: The aftermath of a fight.

Happy (late) birthday, Prettymuchobsessive! :D

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**Injury  
**

By Dark Ice Dragon

* * *

Takeo grimaced as he woke up, a headache throbbing to the beat of his heart, his veins tingling. There was a rhythmic beeping somewhere, too slow to be an alarm, but loud enough to be noticeable.

It wasn't good, but the fact he was waking up... Somewhere soft, on a bed, and he exhaled when he opened his eyes, seeing the familiar recovery room ceiling. He was home.

He blinked at the IV attached to his arm, and all the other cords that tied him to a heart monitor. A second one was attached to Tao in the other bed, who was starting to wake up as well, his brow furrowing.

"Hey."

Takeo smiled at M-21, but even that made him wince, all his muscles tender. What had happened? He remembered taking care of some of the agents, but after that, his memory was blank.

"'Kay, if I'm awake," Tao slurred, and M-21 reached for the cup on the bedside table, making Takeo frown, "that means - ooh, thanks." Tao sipped from the cup M-21 gave him. "That means we're alive, right?

"Why are you wearing bandages?" Takeo asked, pushing himself upright.

"_Huh?_" Tao's head snapped towards M-21.

M-21 caught Tao's cup with a sigh before he spilled it, showing more of the bandages wrapped around his arms.

"Did someone take yer arm off and you regrew it?" Tao asked.

"My healing isn't _that_ good," M-21 said with a grimace. "And why would I need bandages when I'm regrowing it?"

"Ta protect you from infection while you regrow yer skin!"

Takeo drank some of the water from his bedside table, eyeing the bandages. Blood was seeping through, red and fresh. "Why are you still bleeding?" He and Tao must have been sleeping for a few hours already - M-21 usually healed in minutes. There was a pattern to the blood trails, winding up his arms like a rope. None of the agents had used a weapon like that.

M-21 pursed his lips and his gaze slid away.

There was only one thing that Takeo knew that would affect M-21's healing, but... If Frankenstein had lost complete control, M-21 wouldn't be alive.

Which had to mean...

Takeo clenched a hand, his head throbbing again. Murmuring grew louder in Takeo's head, hissing promises of power and revenge but he quashed it until everything was quiet again.

"What happened?" Tao asked, his voice soft. He must have figured it out as well.

M-21 squared his shoulders. "Nothing."

Now that Takeo was paying attention, it wasn't just bandages that was different about M-21. He was paler than usual, dark shadows under his eyes. He hadn't rested much?

"Uh huh," Tao said, as Takeo raised an eyebrow at M-21.

"It's fine," M-21 said, pursing his lips.

Which meant it wasn't and he was hiding something.

"We can figure out what happened," Takeo said, "even if we don't remember." Because the only reason M-21 would be acting the way he was and still be hurt hours after, would be if he or Tao had lost control of Dark Spear and attacked him.

"And Boss woulda told us too," Tao said, nodding. "So no hiding that from us - _if_ there's a next time. Which there shouldn't be, 'cause we'll have a better handle on it."

Takeo wasn't so sure, not when he couldn't remember there being a warning before he blacked out. Frankenstein hadn't been taken over by Dark Spear so maybe he could advise them on what to look out for.

"I wasn't hiding it," M-21 grumbled. "We all survived, and that's what mattered."

"_Survived_ isn't the same as unhurt, M," Tao said, as Takeo yawned. That must have been as far as his current energy reserves went. "Totally gonna talk more 'bout this when I wake up 'gain."

M-21 huffed. "Fine."

"You should rest as well," Takeo added as he eased himself down on the bed again.

"Yeah, I will." M-21 didn't move, but Takeo's eyelids were too heavy for him to force himself awake, and he drifted off. 

[-]

"Nnng..." Tao said, blearily staring at the...cup? Yeah, the cup on the bedside table. He needed that, his mouth feeling dry and furry.

His body was a bundle of aches and his muscles protested at the movement, but it was better than feeling like something was trying to scrape him hollow with every beat of his heart.

He glanced around the room and furrowed his brow seeing M-21 dozing in a chair in between his and Takeo's bed. The bandages around M-21's arms still had blood seeping through them, but the pattern was different from the last time, thicker at his biceps and thinner in places. So they had been changed since the last time Tao had been awake but...

Tao wrapped a cable around his cup and pulled it over as he sent another cable towards M-21. It was a little lethargic than usual, slithering over his blankets rather than hovering above. He prodded M-21 in the chest as he drank. Aaah, cool water.

M-21 jerked awake and blinked at him.

"There's a third bed in here, ya know," Tao said, tilting his head towards it.

"But I need to make sure-"

"That's what the heart monitors are for," Tao said, poking him in the chest again. "If one of us crashes, Boss'll know." The IVs were at a higher level than the last time Tao had seen them, so Boss had checked on them while they were sleeping too. Though...

Tao peered at M-21, who sighed. "What?"

"How come you're not attached to a million wires?" Boss would have wanted to keep an eye on M-21 too, right? "Boss just left you to your own devices?" Sure, M-21 had enhanced healing that was way better than his or Takeo's, but Boss hadn't stitched up the wounds? Was M-21's healing eating the stitches as well?

...Come to think of it, had he ever seen Boss see to M-21? M-21 was always the first one up and about after a fight so Tao had assumed everything had been cleared away, but maybe that wasn't it... Even when he and Takeo had been getting enhanced in the tanks, M-21 hadn't been with them.

Why hadn't he noticed this before?

And he _knew_ M-21. M-21 would have made a remark about that, assuming he'd been left out because he was weak, but M-21 hadn't, so what had he missed?

"Yeah."

Tao stared at him. Okay, something _definitely_ wasn't adding up. "What about painkillers?" Because Tao had only felt a bit of Dark Spear's touch when Boss had been training them and that felt like it was trying to bury under his skin hours later (and maybe it was, knowing Dark Spear); M-21 must have been hit harder between him and Takeo.

This time M-21 stared at him, like he'd said something that he should know the answer to, but was that 'Of course he did', or 'of course he didn't'?

"You don't-?" M-21 stopped with a huff.

'Of course he didn't', then. What was the obvious hints he'd missed and why hadn't he pieced it together yet? Tao pulled himself up into a sitting position, trying to get his groggy brain working.

"I don't...?" Tao prompted, sipping his water again.

M-21 continued staring at him, and Tao knew that look, it was one M-21 had when he was waiting for Tao's joke because he knew it was coming, but he wasn't joking this time!

"I thought you'd read my data?"

Not exactly what Tao expected him to say. "Yeah, of course I have. But that was to get your measurements." Since Boss could get those way more accurately than Tao could at that point. "I don't think I saw any obvious notes when I had." Nothing that had anyway, or maybe it had been buried in there and M-21 thought he'd read everything?

"Huh..."

When M-21 didn't say anything after that, Tao said, "Sooo, what am I s'posed to have found out?"

M-21 pursed his lips and then sighed, making Tao snicker.

"You can't say that and then not tell me!" Tao said, prodding him in the chest again.

M-21 waved a hand at the cable, which said just how tired he was - normally he would have grabbed it to stop it. "Fine," he said, and Tao curled the cable around M-21's hand, squeezing it a little. "I can't take any medications or anything with needles without bad side effects."

Tao peered at him. Side effects were something modified humans got used to in the Union - Aris had tried to minimise them for the DA-5 since they would have looked sickly, and they'd been lucky with that. Experimental material wouldn't have had that courtesy and would have been left to deal with it before the next round of tests.

"How bad are we talkin' about?" Because Boss would do his best to try and make something that worked with M-21 and Tao didn't think Boss would withhold treatment just because of side effects.

The corner of M-21's lip curled upwards. "As soon as it's in my system, I'm puking with a high fever and heart palpitations." He paused, his eyes drifting. "I think one of them caused internal bleeding once. And that's only a few of them. Frankenstein's tried a lot of different things, but it all ends up the same."

Tao winced. "Werewolf healing really doesn't like _any_ intruders, huh." Ouch.

"No," M-21 said with a snort. "I'm better before the medication than after."

"Fair," Tao said, nodding. "But you still need rest, right?"

"Yeah."

"And sleep, right?"

M-21 narrowed his eyes at him, but that could have been him trying to stay away. "...Yeah."

"Then get your butt over to that bed, mister!" Tao said, pointing at the spare bed. "You've got _more_ reason to stay in bed, not less!" He needed as much rest as his body could allow, since he couldn't get help through medication.

"I'm surprised Boss didn't order you to bed rest anyway," Tao continued, poking M-21 again when he didn't move.

M-21 shrugged. "He knows I get bored lying in bed, and I'll start overthinking if I'm left to stare at the walls. That doesn't help."

"Hnnng, fair." But watching over him and Takeo wasn't different either.

"I'm not allowed to leave the house until he's satisfied though," M-21 said, his mouth twisting up into a small smirk.

"Heh, good. Hmm..." Tao pushed himself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"Oi, why are you getting up."

"'Cause I'm all healed up and rested, so let's get your mind off staring at walls or our pretty faces, huh?" Tao said with a grin. "Though I guess Counterstrike's out, hm..." They'd need their arms for that, and that wouldn't work with M-21's injuries.

"Do you still have the list of movies to watch?" Takeo asked, rubbing at his face as he sat up.

Tao beamed at him. "'Course I do! We're almost at the triple digits of stuff we need to see."

"We could do that instead?" Takeo said, testing the IV pole if it moved easily. It did.

"M-21 gets to pick!" Tao swayed a little when he stood up but he didn't fall flat on his face so it was all good.

"Throw it in the randomiser," M-21 said, hovering next to him and Takeo.

Tao waved him off, holding onto the IV pole instead. He would have normally loved to lean on M-21, but not when his arms were hurting. "You can pick the popcorn flavour too."

"Throw that in the randomiser too," M-21 said, and Tao scrunched his face up at him.

"We'll get you to make decisions _one_ day." Eventually. But right now, even though they were _better_, that didn't mean they had the energy to think that hard either.

"We'll see them all at some point," M-21 said, "so long as you don't keep adding to the list."

"Can't promise that, heh."

Once they were all standing without worry of falling and had detached themselves from the heart monitors, the three of them made their way out the recovering room. 

[-]

Takeo shifted when he felt M-21's head hit his shoulder, trying to make him slightly more comfortable.

"Not even five minutes," Tao whispered, lowering the volume of the movie.

"I think going down the stairs was enough," Takeo murmured. They'd made it down without anyone falling, but they'd all kept a hand on the banister, just in case.

"Yeah, he'd already been dozing when I woke up, so I didn't think he'd last that much longer." Tao hummed, playing with a cushion. "Move him so he's laying down in ten minutes? He shouldn't wake up then."

Takeo nodded and settled in to watch the movie, M-21's breathing slow and even.


End file.
